What is DTS-HD Master Audio

Overview

DTS-HD Master Audio is a lossless/lossy audio encoding developed by DTS used on Blu-ray disc and HD-DVD to produce surround sound in home theater. DTS-HD Master Audio is a combination of lossless audio codec and a lossy DTS Digital core. If the hardware doesn't support the Master audio, then the codec reduces to a lossy core, which means some audio information is removed from the original soundtrack. DTS-HD Master Audio supports 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 channel of surround soundtrack. By comparison with the lossless PCM audio codec, DTS-HD Master Audio is a well-received audio codec on Blu-ray films because it occupies less storage space in order to make more room for HD video and other special effects.

Technical Details

DTS-HD Master Audio accommodates as many as 8 audio channels with 7 full channels and 1 subwoofer channel. It lays claim to be a lossless digital audio format due to its bit-for-bit equivalent to the mastering recoding (the true goes for its competitor Dolby TrueHD). For DTS-HD Master Audio, its sampling frequency is 96kHz with variable bitrate of up to 24.5Mbps on Blu-ray disc and up to 18.0 Mbps on HD-DVD.

DTS-HD Master Audio houses two types of data streams, namely, the original DTS core data and the extra residual data that is composed of what remains from the original signal and the lossy compression DTS core stream.

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DTS-HD Master Audio is also capable of being backward compatible, which means you are able to gain access to DTS digital surround sound with Blu-ray disc encoded with DTS-HD Master Audio in the event that your hardware is not DTS-HD Master Audio compatible. If your devices don't have HDMI, you are allowed to acquire DTS digital surround sound using coaxial or optical connection.